The human mind appears suddenly and inexplicably out of some unknown and unimaginable void. It passes half its known life in the mental chaos of sleep. Even when awake it is a victim of its own ill-adjustment, of disease, of age, of external suggestion, of nature's compulsions; it doubts its own sensations and trusts only in instruments and averages.

Being in a hurry seems so fiercely important when you yourself are the hurrier and so comically ludicrous when it is someone else.

There is indeed a heaven on this earth, a heaven which we inhabit when we read a good book.

My prayer is that what we have gone through [World War One] will startle the world into some new realization of the sanctity of life, animal as well as human.

We call a child's mind 'small' simply by habit; perhaps it is larger than ours is, for it can take in almost anything without effort.

A human being: an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing.

From now until the end of time no one else will ever see life with my eyes, and I mean to make the best of my chance.